


Playing With Hair

by SabineElectricHeart (TheLifeAndLiesOfFerns)



Category: 7'Scarlet (Visual Novel)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Romance, Sleeping Together, Study Date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29052267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLifeAndLiesOfFerns/pseuds/SabineElectricHeart
Summary: Hino wakes up from a nightmare, but soon is lulled back to sleep by his girlfriend.
Relationships: Hanamaki Ichiko/Kagutsuchi Hino
Kudos: 6





	Playing With Hair

A throaty gasp for air woke Hino up from his deep, yet restless, slumber.

He was choking, feeling frantic and nervous. His heart was ready to tear right out of his chest. Frantically looking around, he spotted her softly asleep on the her living room couch, the book she was reading thrown over her face, and so he started to calm his breathing.

It had only been a nightmare, but it was one he had often. As Hino took in her placid sleeping figure, flashes of the night terror entered his mind.

It was always the same one where Ichiko was on the ground, screaming desperately for help. The serial killer... Well, Hino usually pictures him as Mr. Tsukuyomi, the photographer they met while they were staying in Okunezato, on his mind’s eye for some reason. The serial killer had her under some sort torture, cutting her up with a knife.

She was crying and shrieking his name, but he was always too late. Crimson floods of blood always flowed in a gore scene and her teary violet eyes lost their light right before him. Her last words to him as she died in his arms were always "Hanate could have saved me. Why couldn’t you save me?"

Hino looked over her slightly parted lips and peacefully shut eyes in almost religious wonder. He trailed his hand on her button-up shirt, feeling her chest rise and fall very slowly as she breathes.

It was Autumn once again, and they were back from Okunezato. They could not find any hide or hair of Hanate’s anywhere out in the mountains, and so they held a small memorial for him on the banks of the river to pay their respects and say their goodbyes. Life is for the living, after all, and so they returned to Tokyo, to their collegiate careers, and so the petty dramas related to it emerged again.

His girlfriend was comically inept in History, while Hino himself was quite apt at it, and so he tried to help her to come up to speed, but to no avail. Alas, where some lesser man would feel very frustrated, the boy was more than happy to explain the same damn aspect of Taisho society over and over again, because while she grumbles in frustration, she is safe.

Ichiko was safe and alive here at Tokyo, here with him, where they both actually belonged.

She was with him, she was where he could see her and touch her, where his mind finally could be at ease, where he could protect her. She loved him, just as much as he loved her, and he loved her a lot.

Suddenly, as he pulls off his hand, her body tenses up and her breath becomes shallower. Her sleep was disturbed, and Hino remembers she is not much of falling to deep slumbers, especially in such uncomfortable position.

"Hino?" Ichiko groaned, waking to his fixed stare. "What happened? Why are you here? What time is it?"

“It’s late. It must be very late. We were studying History again, but we drifted off eventually.” He responded. “I’m sorry, I have woken you up. I just…”

The dishevelled, nervous boy pulled her into a deep hug, pressing as close to she as he possibly could.

"I love you." Hino lovingly kissed her fair cheek, colouring immediately as he places his lips on it. "I love you so, so much. I’ll never be able to tell you how much."

"Oh! I love you too." The brunette giggled drowsily, even if slightly confused with the whole situation. “I love you, too, Hino.”

The affection was quite sudden, even for someone as overt as her boyfriend, but she could not find in herself to complain. She sat up to cup his face and kissed Hino delicately. He rested on her lap, body relaxing as he stared up at her sleep-ruined makeup, thinking she was as beautiful as she ever was.

"May I please play with your hair, Hino?" She snapped him out of his thoughts suddenly, a jolt of awareness passing through his relaxed spine. “It really relaxes me.”

Hino's heart filled with giddy, teenage love and he nodded softly, fluttering his eyes shut to enjoy the sensation. Instantly, Ichiko took her fingers to his coarse, black hair and ran her hands through the long, cowlicked strands falling on his bloodshot eyes. It was an art, almost, how her rather short nails scraped his scalp softly and toyed and twirled with sections of his hair around her fine fingertips.

This was when Hino was at his happiest. Uneventful nights, alone with Ichiko at an otherwise empty house, her parents away to some weird trip overseas as they often are, with her hands in his hair lovingly and drifting off to sleep laid on her lap. To him, it was the picture of pure peace, and it was a wonderful feeling.

"Ow!" Hino flinched, yelping suddenly and standing back straight.

His girlfriend, the so-called artiste of hair-playing, had accidentally tugged too hard, and had the audacity to start laughing quietly at his misery.

"You pulled my hair…" The boy by her side grumbled, grouchy.

"I’m sorry, honey." She yawned, nonchalantly. “You had a mean knot over there, I just had to untangle it.”

"You are so lucky you are cute." Hino pointed out, yawning now, too, and laying back on her inviting lap.

Shared laughter met the eventual sleepy cuddles and Hino knew that he was the lucky one in this relationship, that he took more than he gave. Because he was the one who lucked out with the girl that he loved more than anything holding him so softly in her arms, lulling him back to a state of utter relaxation, and, as if Ichiko was his personal lucky charm, he slept without a single other disturbance that night.

Even if it happened that he woke up the next morning with a bad case of cotton mouth and his back aching.


End file.
